Economy & Innovation

Updated 9:33 a.m. , Nov. 11 with announcement of formal offer - Anheuser-Busch InBev has put forth a formal offer to takeover rival brewer SABMiller. The announcement follows word last month that the companies had an agreement in principle on a deal worth more than $100 billion. In an effort to clear regulatory hurdles in the U.S., Molson Coors will buy out SABMiller's interest in a joint venture. That means A-B InBev, which brews Budweiser, will not own SABMiller's U.S. business or the global rights to the Miller brand.

Officials broke ground Tuesday for a project that could spark an economic revitalization in the Carondolet area of south St. Louis. River City Business Park, just north of River City Casino is a 54-acre property on the site of the former Carondolet Coke plant.

St. Louis-based Peabody Energy is revising how it anticipates efforts to address climate change could affect the company's bottom line. The world's largest publicly-traded coal company has reached an agreement with the New York state attorney general's office following a multi-year investigation. The New York attorney general accused Peabody of violating state laws by not giving enough information in its financial statements about the monetary risks associated with climate change. Peabody...

Updated 1:33 p.m., Feb. 16 with rejection of protest - Boeing is considering its options following the denial of a protest over the military's decision to award a lucrative contract to a rival contractor. The U.S. Government Accountability Office says it has found no issues with the Air Force’s move to award the contract for the Long Range Strike Bomber to Northrop Grumman . Boeing's St. Louis-based Defense, Space & Security division still claims the Air Force's evaluation of the competing proposal was "fundamentally and irreparably flawed."

The engineering, manufacturing and development phase of the deal is estimated to be worth more than $20 billion

In October 2014, Corey Harris was unemployed and looking for work. Now he makes $33 an hour as an ironworker apprentice in St. Louis. He made the transition from out-of-work retail manager to a career in construction through a pre-apprenticeship program called Building Union Diversity, or BUD. Harris graduated from the pilot session of BUD just before Thanksgiving 2014. He was indentured as an ironworker apprentice in December and started getting steady work in March 2015.

ConAgra Foods is giving up on its St. Louis-based private brands unit after about three years. The Nebraska-based company is selling most of what it acquired in the 2013 Ralcorp deal to TreeHouse Foods in a $2.7 billion transaction.

In May of last year, BioGenerator officials crunched the numbers and realized about a dozen companies in their portfolio would need to raise $60 to $90 million in order to keep growing. BioGenerator, which formed in 2003, is a sort of incubator for biotech companies in St. Louis, providing early stage funding and support for 65 companies to date.

The National Retail Federation recently found that 157 million Americans will celebrate Halloween this year. Not impressed? That equates to over $6.9 billion in spending —on costumes, parties, candy and…wait for it…boo! Haunted houses. Nearly 20 percent of those 157 million will step foot in a haunted house this season alone.

A non-profit aimed at developing more programmers in St. Louis is launching a new center on the north side. The LaunchCode Mentor Center will open its doors Thursday evening at 4811 Delmar Boulevard, in a former state unemployment office. Center director Chris Bay said they hope to engage the surrounding Fountain Park neighborhood with the kickoff event. " We want people to not just come and celebrate and see a ribbon being cut. We want people to interact," he said. Bay said they’d like to...

A new partnership in the Metro East is designed to train more workers for cybersecurity careers. Organizers are hoping it will boost the area’s chances of landing the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which will be moving from south St. Louis. The Midwest Cyber Center of Excellence is based just outside Scott Air Force Base. It's goal is to help to train workers in all sectors to better protect an employer's online network. “I just think it’s a natural fit,” St. Clair County Economic...

Whether you admire or admonish them, the wiz kids of Wall Street have been fodder for conversations around the American dinner table for decades. Who was responsible for making it such a hot topic? On Tuesday’s “St. Louis on the Air,” host Don Marsh discussed some of the 14 “financial visionaries” that author Edward Morris has identified as the critical figures who “wrote the rules of American finance.” Morris recently wrote a book published by the Columbia University Press entitled “ Wall...

The city of St. Louis can start the legal process to move residents from a north side area that would instead become home to a federal spy agency. The city's Board of Aldermen passed a resolution Friday allowing the use of eminent domain against 19 property owners. They live within a 100-acre acre that is the proposed site for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The vote was 19- 5 with one abstention. The city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority (LCRA) has spent the...

St. Louis native Danny Meyer recently rocked the restaurant world, making national news with his decision to eliminate tipping from his family of New York City restaurants. Some have lauded Meyer’s decision as the first true step towards a more equal restaurant; others question its feasibility, predicting a mass exodus of servers and a reduction in service quality. Meyer’s decision to eliminate tipping comes at an interesting time in labor politics. Service industry workers all over the...

Originally published in St. Louis Globe-Democrat / Courtesy St. Louis Mercantile Library

For 50 years, the Gateway Arch has drawn visitors from around the world to downtown St. Louis. From presidents and pop stars, to school kids and church groups, millions of people each year have come to marvel at the monument. But exactly how many people have visited in five decades? That depends on how they’re counted.

Professors Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer were startled to recently find a trend in American poverty that they hadn’t seen since the mid-1990s : the number of American households living on around $2, per person, per day has reached 1.5 million, including 3 million children. With this statistic in mind, Edin and Shaefer set out to write “ $2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America ,” which was released hardcover in September. On Wednesday’s “St. Louis on the Air,” Shaefer joined host Don...

St. Louis soon could begin using the eminent domain process against land owners within the proposed site for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on the city's north side. Members of the aldermanic Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee voted 8-1 on Wednesday for a resolution that listed 37 property owners who could be forced to sell their land to the city. The resolution is expected to go before the full board on Friday.

Owners of rental property in unincorporated St. Louis County will have to register with the county — and potentially face closer governmental scrutiny. But critics say they’re planning to go to court over legislation that they contend is overly burdensome against poor and minority tenants.

International accounting firm KPMG looked at cities all over the United States and landed on St. Louis for its information tech expansion. The company already has an office in downtown St. Louis with 270 employees. Over the next three years, it plans to add 175 IT positions, the company announced at a press conference today. Karen Vangyia , the managing partner of the local office, said St. Louis is one of the fastest growing markets for technology jobs. She pointed to computer science...

BioSTL has grabbed a $500,000 grant from the Small Business Administration. It was one of just three Regional Innovation Cluster Initiative grants the SBA is giving out nationally and is meant to spur small business growth.

After rejecting a number of earlier offers, British-based beer company SABMiller accepted in principle a 69 billion British pound ($106 billion) offer from Budweiser brewer Anheuser Busch InBev. If Tuesday's agreement is finalized, the new beer company will be the largest in the world and control two top U.S. brands in Budweiser and Miller Genuine Draft, according to The Associated Press. SABMiller rejected at least four other offers before provisionally accepting the offer that values...

When riots broke out in Ferguson and Dellwood last year following the grand jury decision in the Michael Brown-Darren Wilson case, Juanita Morris' business of 28 years burned to the ground. In one night, Morris lost the building that housed Fashions R Boutique and almost all of her inventory. But she vowed to rebuild, even in the face of what she called “some dark days.”

A study of four possible sites for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s relocation is out, and the city of St.Louis is very much in the running. (You can read the 468 page report here .) The NGA is planning to move from its current location south of downtown St. Louis and build a new $1.6 billion facility. In an important step in the federal process, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released its draft Environmental Impact Statement on Friday. It basically breaks down the pros and...

The retail grocery industry in the St. Louis region and throughout the country is more competitive than ever. Local chains that have been around for decades are adapting to customer expectations as they face increasing pressure from big-name national stores and even discount outlets.

If you don’t know Robert Reich from his term as the 22nd U.S. Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration, perhaps you’ve heard his commentaries on “Marketplace.” The economist and scholar has written fifteen books on the state of the American economy and recently released his sixteenth, “ Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few .” Reich’s most recent book chronicles how moneyed political power and influence in the United States contributed to a dwindling middle class, income...

Monsanto announced Wednesday it would shed 2,600 employees in the next 18 to 24 months as the company deals with declining seed sales. The seed giant reported a $495 million loss, or about $1.06 per share, for its fiscal fourth quarter. It’s not clear how many jobs will be affected at its Creve Coeur-based headquarters. The cuts represent about 12 percent of Monsanto’s workforce, and spokeswoman Sara Miller said they will take place globally across all functions. " We’re currently evaluating...

The coal industry has hit hard times. This summer several coal companies, including Alpha Natural Resources and Patriot Coal, filed for bankruptcy. St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company, is not immune. The coal giant’s share price has fallen nearly 97 percent in the last five years. The company recently did a reverse stock split, bundling 15 shares into one in order to avoid share prices going below $1. Peabody Energy spokesman Vic Svec said as a commodity...

A little more West Coast is moving into St. Louis. The music streaming company Pandora opened an office inside Cortex, St. Louis’ innovation district, on Monday. " Pandora came looking for us," said Dougan Sherwood, co-founder and managing director of CIC St. Louis, which is housed in the @4240 building. Sherwood said officials with Pandora, which is based in Oakland, Calif., wanted to replicate the culture they have at their headquarters. " So when you come to a place like CIC , which has...

A new anti-bullying app available on Google Play is the brain child of a handful of St. Louis dads. The Stop Harassing Me Now app , which is also designed to combat domestic violence, records flagged calls and texts and stores them in a secure database in case they are needed as evidence.